All Too Well
by notreadytosaygoodbye
Summary: Post Forget Me Not. A look back at the history of Sara and the relationship between Grissom and Sara. Sara's POV.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This story wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the encouragement of MonstersInside and UniqueInsanity. You should check out their stories!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own the characters of CSI. I don't own Taylor Swift either, unfortunately.

* * *

_You call me up again, just to break me like a promise,  
so casually cruel in the name of being honest.  
_

She was alone again. For most of her life, she'd been alone. Feeling this way was not new, it was a recurring feeling, one she thought she would never have to face again. At least, that's what he'd promised. _You'll never be alone again; we're in this together now. _When he'd arrived in Costa Rica, he'd made many promises. Even his wedding vows seemed empty now. Till death do us part, he had said. Look where that had gotten them.

She'd been alone throughout her childhood. Her parents never gave her much attention, except for when her father got drunk, but that was not attention she wanted. No one wanted that kind of attention. When her mother finally snapped, stabbing her father seven times, she was even more alone. Her familiar surroundings, the comfort and safety of her bedroom were torn away from her. She'd been placed in the system, never fitting in, never staying in the same home for too long. She sought solitude, embraced it. How can you trust someone when everyone in your life has let you down?

She put all her efforts into work. Work gave her the independence she so desperately sought. Her efforts paid off; she'd graduated at 16 as valedictorian and attained a scholarship to Harvard. She wasn't like the other college students; she didn't drink, she didn't go to parties. Sometimes she craved the attention of men, but she only took what she needed from them, not letting them get too close. She'd seen how relationships could end.

After Harvard, she moved to Berkeley to attend graduate school. She got a job at the San Francisco Coroner's office. Her life seemed to be falling into place; she just had no one to share it with. Her upward trajectory continued when she got a position at the crime lab, starting as a CSI Level 1. On one of her first cases, she met Doug. Doug Wilson was good for her. He was kind, attentive without smothering, and gentle. She started doing all the things she had missed out on. They went on proper dates, they went to bars together, and she trusted him.

Then she met _him _and everything changed.

She soon became a CSI Level 2 and her boss had encouraged her to attend more lectures to continue her development. She signed up to the next one available, which was to be taught by one Dr. Grissom. Her boss had joked that she'd need a boat load of caffeine to stay awake or a comfy pillow to get through his lecture. _He can't be that bad,_ she had thought. She'd gotten home from pulling a double shift when she had to leave again for the lecture. She threw on some casual clothes and pulled her hair into a ponytail.

It wasn't his looks that caught her attention first, although that wasn't to say he wasn't handsome. She could have looked into his bottomless blue eyes all day. But it was his intellect and mind that won her over. She had picked his brain throughout the lecture, asking questions ranging for crime scene analysis to anthropology. She was captivated by him, he was an enigma and she wanted to know more. So she had asked him to go for a coffee with her; she had so many more questions to ask. What had started off as an innocent conversation soon turned into a good-natured debate about the different types of fingerprint powder, extending to philosophy and religion. She had never felt this connected to anyone before. But he had to leave, Las Vegas needed him. He left her his number and email address and told her to get in touch if she needed anything. He stole one final glance her way, stealing her heart in the process.


	2. Chapter 2

She took him up on his offer of contact, at first sending him questions she had about work. Then she started to ask him more personal questions, but he didn't shy away. It soon became a daily ritual, either a phone call or an email, telling each other about their day at work, comforting each other after a difficult case. It was the one thing she looked forward to. Her relationship with Doug began to deteriorate; all her spare time was spent talking to the man who had enchanted her with one look.

She hadn't heard from him for a couple of days. He ignored her phone calls and her emails. She had wracked her brain looking for anything she could have done to scare him away. She was worried. Then she had received a desperate phone call. _I need you. Please._ A CSI had been shot and he needed her to investigate one of his team members. She said yes without hesitation. If he needed her, she would be there.

She packed her things, left a note for Doug and called her boss on the way to the airport. She wasn't sure what to expect when she arrived. As she approached the scene he was working, she felt the butterflies in her stomach. When she finally saw him, all her doubts about coming vanished. _I don't even have to turn around. Sara Sidle._

The investigation was quicker than she had expected. She had barely seen Grissom whilst she had been there, but he offered to take her out for breakfast as a thank you. They sat in companionable silence but when it was time for her to leave, he had stopped her. _Come and work for me. It would be good to have you here._ She had agreed like it was the easiest decision of her life. She had said she would need to return to San Francisco to organise her belongings, but she could start in a week. He'd pulled her into an awkward hug and left.

She'd found an apartment easily, but the challenge was making her new co-workers accept her. She felt like she was eighteen again, struggling to fit in, trying to find her place in the world. The flirting between herself and Grissom was relentless; she was constantly trying to impress him. She didn't talk to him outside of work anymore, their daily ritual almost completely forgotten. Their relationship had stayed the same for nearly two years; it was a turbulent one but it was familiar.

After a case that hit particularly close to home, she decided she need to get a life here, start making connections. She hadn't been with anyone since Doug. So she sought the company of a paramedic named Hank. They weren't in love. They used each other, but it worked for them.

She felt Grissom withdrawing from her. He had been the one to push her towards Hank, so why did he resent her for it. Was he jealous? She felt like he no longer respected her. She had threatened to quit, so he had sent her a plant. That was all she needed. _From Grissom_ the label had read. She hadn't expected anything more from him.

She found out she had been Hank's bit on the side. It hurt her more than it should have, but it proved why she rarely trusted anyone. People lie. People can hurt each other without weapons, simply with words.

The Hank incident had used up her patience, it was all or nothing. She decided to ask Grissom to dinner. She was sick of being alone or in meaningless relationships. Then the lab exploded. _Honey, this doesn't look good._ It was now or never. But he turned her down. She honestly hadn't prepared herself for this rejection. She had told him he needed to figure _this_ out, whatever this was, before he was too late. What she didn't tell him was that he could never be too late. He still had her heart, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

If she had thought that things were bad before then, she couldn't have been more wrong. Things only got worse. He was disrespectful, he avoided her and he treated her like she didn't matter to him. She started to believe it until she was stood on the other side of the glass, listening to him confess his feelings to a suspect. _I couldn't do it._ She swore that those words would haunt her for the rest of her life. That was the straw that finally broke Sara Sidle. She found company in the bottom of a bottle. Her downward spiral was happening and no one around her could stop it. After she got turned down for the promotion, she swore she had hit rock bottom. Then she was pulled over for a DUI and that was it.

But then he had turned up, and without judgement, had taken her hand and guided her home. Did he not realise he was responsible for her downfall? He had refused to leave her alone that night, sleeping on her couch and promising to try to repair their friendship. It was a start. With his help, she could surely find herself again.

Their camaraderie returned after that. She found herself on a much more even keel. She even started to open up to him again. _You've always been a little more than a boss to me._ Things were looking up. That was until she found herself being suspended for insubordination. She was sure that she was going to be fired this time. But he was there again, when she needed him the most. He listened to her, held her hand and told her that he wouldn't let anything happen to her. He had saved her more times than she cared to admit.

She began to hope again that maybe there could be something more between them. Maybe the last 5 years had been worth the pain and struggle. And then he had asked Sofia out to dinner, and she hated herself for letting him in again. She had no right to be jealous, he wasn't hers to claim, but yet she was. Trust only ever ended in pain.

She began to wonder what she had done in her life to deserve so much torment. Yet he was there again, giving her the strength she needed. He pleaded to her with his eyes to fight against the mad man who held her hostage. She could see his struggle. She could see the walls crumbling down around him. And then Nick was taken and the final brick came down.

There was a knock at her door after Nick had been rescued and there he was. She couldn't remember a time anyone had looked more broken. His eyes which she loved displayed the depth of his sorrow.

He had kissed her then. It wasn't a gentle kiss, but the desperate kiss of someone who was trying to feel alive. She didn't know how to respond. On the one hand, this is what she had wanted since he had charmed her in San Francisco. But she didn't want to ruin what they had now; she didn't want to be something that he regretted. But she kissed him back. They tumbled into the bedroom, and at that moment, she didn't care if he regretted it, she needed him. They needed each other and when they became one, nothing else mattered.

She thought she must have been dreaming when he didn't run away. He brought her breakfast the next day after work. He opened up to her. This was their new ritual. She didn't push him, she was happy to go at his pace. She started staying at his townhouse and she found that she very rarely stayed on her own anymore. He told her stories about his childhood, about his mother being deaf and his own hearing difficulties. She hadn't thought it was possible to love someone this much. They never said the words to each other. They didn't need to. She had her own little ways of letting him know how she felt. _I'm not ready to say goodbye._

She knew he was burning out. His migraines were more frequent and he was becoming isolated from everyone. He assured her that it didn't have anything to do with her; it was just the miniature killer getting to him. She believed him. And when he left for Massachusetts, she missed him. She stayed at his townhouse while he was gone, clinging to what they had. He called her every day. She listened to him describe the snow and one of his students who reminded him of her. _Maybe we could move here one day_, he had said.

When he returned, she could tell he was better. They reconnected again; their relationship was stronger than ever. She finally said those three words. She told him she didn't need to hear them back, she knew how he felt. He'd told her in his own ways. _Intimately._ And then there was the letter. She had no doubt about his feelings anymore.

But then she nearly lost everything. When the miniature killer took her, she only thought of the last times. The last time she would kiss him, the last time they would make love, the last time she would hear his voice. She had been certain she was going to die but she couldn't just give up. After everything she had been through, she wouldn't let this defeat her. When she could physically go no further, she prayed to a deity that she didn't believe in to take her home. When she regained consciousness, she knew it had worked. Looking into his eyes, she was home.


	4. Chapter 4

She didn't have to stay at the hospital for long. A broken arm and a few cuts were the only visible after effects of her ordeal. Grissom looked after her, dressing her with care, washing her hair in the shower. He told her he loved her as often as he could. He acted like she was a broken puzzle he could fix. Truth be told, she was broken, but not because of the visible scars. She was broken on the inside, and nothing he could do would be able to fix that.

He still knew how to surprise her. He did something that she never imagined he would do. _You know, maybe we should get married._ She couldn't believe it, and when the bee stung her, she barely noticed through the haze of her excitement. She could tell he was nervous, so she put him out of his misery. _Yes. Let's do it._ He didn't have a ring, but that didn't matter. She didn't need one because for what felt like a lifetime, everything seemed to be falling into place. Maybe she would be alright after all.

The nightmares hit her first. She would dream that she was drowning and that this time she couldn't free herself. She would wake up screaming, and he would pull her in and tell her she was safe. _No one can hurt you now._ But the nightmares returned night after night. She couldn't escape them. He couldn't protect her from her dreams.

Next was the loneliness and isolation. She had no one to distract her from herself. When she moved onto swing shift, they barely saw each other. They were lucky to get a couple of hours awake together. She was on a solo when it started raining for the first time since the incident. She was terrified; she replayed her time under the car over and over again in her head. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing he could do either. He couldn't save her from her thoughts.

She was faced with the girl who had haunted her dreams two years before. One of the only people who had managed to outsmart and manipulate her: Hannah West. She wasn't strong enough to take it this time. If she was broken before, she was shattered into a million pieces now. There was only one option left for her. She had to leave. She had to be able to fight her demons in a place that wasn't a constant reminder of them. She couldn't tell him. She couldn't face being convinced to stay, to eventually self-destruct in front of his eyes. So she stole one final kiss, dropped off a letter for him, and left behind the one place she'd called home.

She didn't know what she had expected when she had left. She didn't know where she was going. But she knew from his message on her voicemail that he had read the letter. _I'm not going to try and stop you from going but I just want you to know, if you ever need me, for anything at all, I will be there. _She began to doubt her decision to leave him; they'd gone through so much together. But that was why she couldn't stay. She couldn't let him see her like this. She told herself it was for the best.

She ended up back in the town where she grew up, stood outside of her old house. No one lived in it anymore. Apparently a murder didn't attract buyers. She'd called Grissom last week, told him where she was. She'd had to talk him out of coming to see her. She needed to do this on her own. To bury her demons, she'd decided, she needed to come to terms with her childhood. Her mother was in a care residence not far from the house, which is where she had planned to spend most of her time. She'd already been to the cemetery to visit her father, and buried one of her demons. She still had many more to go.

Months passed by without incident. She was coming to terms with her history, moving beyond what had happened to her in the desert. She spoke with Grissom once a week and they talked about everything and nothing. She found herself laughing more, the heavy weight being slowly lifted from her shoulders. She wasn't ready to go home just yet, but there was a silver lining in sight.

She'd forgotten how quickly one phone call could change everything. She was surprised to see Greg's name on the caller ID; they hadn't spoken much since she'd left. When she answered, her world shrunk around her. _Sara...Warrick's dead. _She couldn't understand how this had happened. She remembered the last words he'd said to her before she'd walked out of their lives as vividly as if it had been yesterday. _You're a tough cookie. I'm not worried about you._ But what struck her right to the bone were her last words. _Sweet dreams._

She didn't think about what she was doing, she just jumped on the first plane to Las Vegas. Greg picked her up at the airport and took her straight to the lab. She waited in his office for him. The seconds ticked by slowly, each minute seemed like an hour. But then he turned the corner and her heart broke for him. Whatever had happened between them over the last few months didn't matter. Except for Warrick, nothing mattered. _I caught the first flight out._

She kept it together at the funeral. He needed her to be strong. When his remaining walls crumbled and his composure faded, she picked him up again. That's what she was there for. She drove to their home that night and held him while he broke down; silently repaying him for all the times he'd been there for her. No words were needed as they grieved for the loss of a best friend.


End file.
